Reviewed by Susan Hancy
Billy’s
class at school will be celebrating diverse cultures and traditions on Harmony
Day and Billy is keen to bring a traditional Lebanese treat to share. His tayta
(grandmother) is happy to make a type of sweet biscuit called kaak for
him to take and she plans to use her secret ingredient. Billy knows she had
ingredients in her pantry that he’s unfamiliar with, but can’t work out what the
secret one could be. He can’t look at a recipe to discover what it is because
Tayta bakes by memory and uses feel, sight and smell to get it right. Even when
Billy helps her prepare the dough, he can’t see the special thing that she’s
added. Eventually Tayta tells him her secret. How should Billy respond when his
teacher thinks the kaak is so delicious that she asks him to share the recipe?
This
is a sweet story for children aged 4 to 7 from an author keen to see her
Lebanese Australian culture represented in picture books. Through the story and
illustrations by Cara King, we learn about traditional Lebanese dress and
baking. This story got my own kids chatting about their favourite treats that
we’ve baked together and I asked them to guess what the secret ingredient was
going to be. They had a question at the end, though: now that we’re privy to
Tayta’s secret ingredient, could Billy please share the recipe? This would have
been a great inclusion as an appendix.
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